Saturday, March 26, 2016

38. THE DIVINE GIFT OF CREATION

I can understand about every fourth word
Beth speaks. She has long, involved, animated conversations non-stop, and she
doesn’t really care if I am in on it.
She has been pretending for hours, in the same room as her brother, who
has been building Lego creations on the table beside her. She stirs a pot of Star
Wars figures as she sips a cup of JarJar Binks tea, sharing it kindly with a
plastic giraffe and a stuffed manatee. She has just shuffled over to my side,
singing this declaration: “Time for din-ner.
Pizza! Pizza ready!” I take a
little bite of the invisible slice and thank her.

She has discovered the Magna-tiles Calvin
is now playing with and a fight ensues, resolved this round with a win by
Calvin, because Beth can be distracted by princesses. She lines them up on the
coffee table. Fifteen minutes later there is a wedding. This is the unlikely
pair:

I watch Beth and her brother pretend, and
because it is a sacred time of year, and our hearts are tenderized by recent
events, I see in it a manifestation of divinity.It strikes me with great force that we are
alive, that we share time and space with particular people, and I can see
layers upon layers of purpose in all of it. I watch two-year-old Beth of the
golden imagination frolic through the world of her imaginings, and I am
reminded of this quote by our prophet, Thomas Monson:

"God left the
world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the
cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged, the forests unfelled
and the cities unbuilt. God gives to us the challenge of raw materials, not the
ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung
and the problems unsolved, that we might know the joys and glories of
creation."

Beth has not yet
discovered her limitations. Maybe it is more accurate to say that her
limitations have not yet discovered her.She is blessed in her innocence to be emotionally free to pretend and imagine
and create.

Fortunately, for Beth and four-year-old
Calvin, they are being raised and nurtured by creative parents. Yesterday, as
Calvin and I were chopping vegetables for dinner, Jordon came in from the
garage. “Hey buddy, do you want to see how this stove I just made works?”He had cut a metal water bottle into three
pieces, drilled holes around the perimeter of the base, then inverted the top piece into
the bottom. He poured some denatured alcohol into it, then he and Calvin lit
the fuel. The flame worked its way out the sides, through the drilled
holes.We set a pot of water on top of
that 3 inch stove and it boiled water in two minutes. Later Cal and I made these
Storm Trooper marshmallow men and created these gory looking strawberry
shortcake Imperial Storm Trooper desserts. Lucky Cal and Beth; theirs is not a
pre-packaged world.

I grew up in a home
where the whole house was filled with raw material.Our poor mom! My brother George was particularly
good at taking raw materials and creating something other than Mom might have
wanted out of them. Now the work of George’s creative efforts has changed the
way our world works, quite literally. But that’s another chapter.

Tomorrow we will boil some fresh white chicken
eggs in water. We will set a handful of small bowls on the kitchen table, fill
them with water and vinegar, then drop colored pellets in each one.Each of us, from three generations, will dip those
eggs in the dye and create whatever we want; plaids, rainbows, plain bold
colors or soft pastels.We may draw
pictures in wax before we dip them, or we may add stickers and glitter and
such.I’ll tell my treasures that we are
like those eggs.What is inside, the
embryo of godliness, is in all of us.But the Lord gave us form, and knowledge, and the right to choose as His
first and best gifts to us.And He says,
as he sends us off to earth still pure and white;

“Go now. Color yourselves however you want. But do not forget who you are inside.”

I love coloring Easter eggs because it
reminds me that we are blessed with the power and the right to color ourselves
in whatever manner we choose. Still, however
desperately we want to become something different and unique, we are all embryo
of something magnificent. As much as we might like to take credit for what we
have made of ourselves, we were first living creatures created by someone else.

I am of the opinion
that all of us who have ever lived had some role in the creation this planet;
some small task we were given in the design and creation of our earth. Wise
parenting dictates such opportunities for children of a household.When I was PTA president we wanted to create
a greater sense of unity among the students, and a deeper respect for the
school.So we gave each student
responsibilities; planting flower bulbs, sweeping sidewalks, painting the bench
out front. Involving them in the creation gave them ownership, and the combined
ownership gave them a greater sense of unity. The urge to create is part of the
divine in all of us, and when we use that gift we are invited to access the
godliness inherent in each of us.

I am conscious of the
possibility of using creation for ungodly purposes.In fact, it’s a pretty foolproof way to
determine how divine a gift is when you can see it being used to deflate,
demoralize or destroy goodness. Just about every form of art rides the golden
pendulum, swinging from profoundly inspirational to frighteningly evil. Music…visual
art…theatre, dance, film, literature… they have all been used to build up and
tear down mankind with the same measure of passion, energy and funding. If you’re
dealing with serious temptation of struggle, consider it a compliment.It means your potential for good is equal to
the pull the devil is putting on you.

My hope is to remain
true to the God given gifts of creation planted in me before time began. And it
is my hope for you as well. Whether you’re composing a tune in your head,
gathering a string of tasty words together, stirring up a recipe, mapping out a
delightful outing with your children, or designing the bulletin board outside a
classroom, the gifts you use are divine. We are invited by the ultimate Creator
to enter His workshop and use His tools.
That’s an awful lot of confidence He must have in us.

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During the season of Lent I make the personal commitment to write every day. I’ve done this for the past eight years, as a token of devotion and thanks to the Lord for giving me a brain that works (usually). I publish these writings here on my blog, unedited and splattered like wet paint, as a way to share them and to keep them for myself and for my posterity. This year I have decided to ruminate on thoughts, ideas, habits and miscellaneous personal practices I would like to put in a figurative HOPE CHEST to take with me into the rest of my life and the life beyond. Besides that, there are bits of advice I would like to tuck into the HOPE CHESTS of my kids and grandkids.